Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

I love the giant flying vulture that looks like a sphinx and throws up on the guy. Vultures throw up a little before they eat a carcass -- enzymes in their body help fight disease from a decaying corpse.

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Pretty much. Doesn't matter WHAT they do with ANY new client, the same people will still say the same thing "It's not UO unless its the 2d client!".

That of course is why they should have NEVER tried to compromise the "Enhanced" Client in the ways they did if they aren't going to shut down 2d because they're NEVER going to get those people on board with ANYTHING remotely modern.

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Some people will be whining that they'd "quit UO" if they got such a client. But fact is, all the millions of players out there who do not play UO would probably play it if it had decent graphics like these.

A competent company would have made an enhanced client so new people would have checked out the game for graphics alone

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Exactly!

If the 3 failed clients had not looked like complete crap compared to modern games, perhaps "classic" fans would have accepted them. The problem wasn't the fact that they were new...the problem was terrible art.

If they had taken actual UO art, rendered it to look like UO art in high res 3D, it would have been awesome!!! But when I ride my horse, which looks like a rhino wearing a long wig, and my feet are dragging the ground as we swivel around the corner to see a dragon that looks more like a large insect...it just doesn't inspire a great deal of awe.

Pretty much. Doesn't matter WHAT they do with ANY new client, the same people will still say the same thing "It's not UO unless its the 2d client!".

That of course is why they should have NEVER tried to compromise the "Enhanced" Client in the ways they did if they aren't going to shut down 2d because they're NEVER going to get those people on board with ANYTHING remotely modern.

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You keep saying this. But it's not true, at least for me and I think probably many others who have hated the EC graphics.
Take a long and impartial look at one of the movies on the front page here in the EC client, and compare that to this Link Realms movie. If you can't see why we can't stand the EC, then I just guess we'll have to keep listening to your rants based on false assumptions.

UO would only need one client if they did it that good. And it's not just the graphics, it's also the animations with it.

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Pretty much. Doesn't matter WHAT they do with ANY new client, the same people will still say the same thing "It's not UO unless its the 2d client!".

That of course is why they should have NEVER tried to compromise the "Enhanced" Client in the ways they did if they aren't going to shut down 2d because they're NEVER going to get those people on board with ANYTHING remotely modern.

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You know, you cry a lot about "EC bashers" coming into threads and ruining them, but from what I've seen, you really are the instigator in most cases.

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Bioware Mythic did one thing definetly right. Before EA acquired them and they made DaoC. It had the best housing, housing rent system to make players pay or lose them and awesome mounts especially when you got higher RvR levels. Even when Mythic combined servers into clusters and still kept housing seperate was wicked. I do give credit where credit is due. Mythic isnt all bad when they do things right.

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I do find that game has smoother and more complex animations for mobs. I really wish Ultima Online's new client would deal with 3 dimensional meshes directly instead of converting them to 2d textures. but then again I am ignorant of the games content pipeline. i heart uo

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UO needs a client with full modern technology like physics and a realistic graphics.
They can keep the EC as base, but all the mobiles, animations and items should be done much much better (absolutely not like KR ones that are drawn by kids).
Here is something we should see:
- if someone is dismounted, the horse shall fall with you
- if you do an ignore armor you should see the character trepassing the enemy armor with his sword
- the whirlwind should show the character doing a pirouette.
- If you throw a lighning should be nice see it coming from the wizard hand
- If you chop a tree, it should fall and growing back
- in the sea we should be able to see some fishes randomly jump in the water surface
- if you kill something or someone you should see a death animation (for example, if a player die should fall in his knee then on the ground)
- Almost every spells need real particle effects (how can be that an ice ring like wither doing only a blue ball under your feet?)
- Another important thing are the sounds! We still have sounds from aos, and we still hearing a wood sound when you are running in the snow or in a swamp, a meteor swarm sound like a flamestrike, the quest sound looks coming from a commodore 64 game...

However, the point is: the details are all! the contents is great, but it's like a raw block of marble, if you are unable to sculpt a detailed statue it's wasted.

I was the second Brit in the closed beta for it.
Couldn't test it for nearly as much as it deserved, since I got a job offer about 6 hours later, and I couldn't make any time for it :<

Game-play wise, it was very similar to UO.
I mentioned it to the dev/community guy who was showing me around (he looked kinda like Dogtanian), and he confirment that one of their devs was a big UO fan (I think former-player, at the time), so it drew quite a lot of influence from it.

The ec engine is ok, forgot what it is but same as warhammer or another good looking guy.

They just outsourced some graphical design, or compromised in something..who knows.. but the effects are that the client looks ...not even dated..but as if they could not decide which graphical design to use.. a mishmash of art

Gamebryo.
It's a pretty capable engine (Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV, Civ IV, WAR), but it's got quite a few shortcomings too.
Problem isn't so much "What it can do" as much as it is "what it can do with the specifications most UO players will be using"

Stop changing UO, make a UO 2 and make it full 3D, now that would rock.

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Because making the exact same game in 3d and calling it by a new name is better than taking an existing game and making it 3D or at least upgrading it so it looks better than something from 1998?

A little more on topic, The EC is such a chop shop job at a client it is not even funny. I have to agree that game play is > Graphics, has always been my stance in this battle, but if we are going to keep two clients, why must they both suck graphics wise? I don't agree with everyone on what is wrong with the EC graphics (Such as the dragons for instance, I rather don't mind the EC version, even like it. It is an animation improvement over the classic client.) but I agree in general it is just wrong. Even if they were completely "new" graphics I think some of them would still be off, Such as has been mentioned riding a mount looks wrong, both graphically and in its animation.

I do not think the game in the OP is all that good looking...Would in fact say it was comparable to the EC in that sense. Although resolution comes into play and from the video I can not tell if the resolution is better (one of my largest issues with the EC is the lack of resolution and the fact that you can zoom in and out but it will look worse than anything my eyes can handle).

Realize of course I play only the EC, have for some time, doesn't mean I can't see what is wrong with it, and also does not mean I can't enjoy it.

As for the EC "hating" I can not fathom why anyone is so opposed to using the client other than wanting the same exact graphics and animations they have in the classic client. While some of the mobile models and some other things were not the right way to go....(they really should have consulted the community a little bit with the sketch drawings or prototype's so they could get some input at least, although most of you are far to biased and only "seem" to be willing to accept the same thing we have had for all these years.) I have to say being so unacceptable of the client is not the right way to go either. If there was more positive support for a client such as the EC then maybe we wouldn't have had to go through the EC at all, since KR could have been modified to be pleasing.

You keep saying this. But it's not true, at least for me and I think probably many others who have hated the EC graphics.
Take a long and impartial look at one of the movies on the front page here in the EC client, and compare that to this Link Realms movie. If you can't see why we can't stand the EC, then I just guess we'll have to keep listening to your rants based on false assumptions.

UO would only need one client if they did it that good. And it's not just the graphics, it's also the animations with it.

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I agree. Dermott's crying again, but all those staying on CC would have played on a client with the same mood but better definition. It's been years we've asked not to throw ugly 3D monsters in the CC, but for years they have designed the new monsters for the 3D (then KR) client and just thrown it in the CC like it would work. It's been years the graphics haven't been designed for CC. You just have to look at one thing : the new items don't have outlines. So of course, whatever you add, it won't match.
If instead of that, they had made a new client respecting the mood (pixel art with outlines) with a better definition and a good interface (the only thing new clients always have had), we would all have gone to the new client.

Some players aren't satisfied by the weird animations and the burned textures of EC. Clearly, the CC is far from perfect, there's lots of graphical problems (that are never fixed of course), but still it works well. My blond character is blond.

Don't mess with the original game and turn it into something its not. You'll simply alienate people from your product.

Starting over would make new people try it, give the possibility to fix the many flaws of UO, make coherent systems and UI, true 3D and so much more. Without alienating its current playerbase.

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..and watch the best MMO of all time die. No it won't happen in the near future, but over time UO will end. The goal of KR/EC was to re create interest from the outside world which obviously failed. So what did they do next? Turned UO into auto pilot mode. EMs to keep current players busy, and a skeleton developer staff to keep things somewhat running.

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..and watch the best MMO of all time die. No it won't happen in the near future, but over time UO will end. The goal of KR/EC was to re create interest from the outside world which obviously failed. So what did they do next? Turned UO into auto pilot mode. EMs to keep current players busy, and a skeleton developer staff to keep things somewhat running.

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Thats kinda how it is now anyway. UO can survive just fine, but UO2 has a chance to get anywhere, UO will never become much bigger than it is.

Stratics Veteran

That's exactly my point. With the terrible client they attempted creating to revive it. Now we’re on autopilot mode.

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Most clients attempted to be made would be terrible, there's far too much detail in UO for modern graphics engines who rely on other tricks. If you zoom in on a gamebryo game like Fallout 3, you'll see that the details are not all that good.

Stop changing UO, make a UO 2 and make it full 3D, now that would rock.

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It would, if they could do it right, which I'm not sure of. Classic based UO, with custom housing and many of the cooler features added over the years that don't affect the combat system, or trade in some ways, in a full 3D. Ranged attacks would have to be looked at and maybe modified.

The biggest thing about full 3D with camera angles and all, I'm not sure that it can be done with "items on the ground" and all the customizations UO has. Items on the ground is a wonderful Sandbox feature that gets overlooked by many. It adds a realism and a deeper sense of "world" that I think is very, very important. It can be used for all kinds of events by players, EM and GMs, and allows players to set up things anywhere (Log forts, information books, secret symbols, tables and chairs and foods, whatever).

If it were to be a problem, it would probably be for large numbers of items. In that case, I'd suggest that in a given area (4x4?) if the item count goes over a set number, it all gets replaced with a container (art from a selection designed for this) that mimics some of the items in the "stack", and that this container holds the items replaced. A game developer told me once that this has been done in a game before, but I don't know what game that was. Probably a single player game, but no idea for sure. He mentioned the game name, but I didn't recognize it and didn't search it at the time, and forgot what it was.

Anyways, it could indeed rock. Justice system required, the biggest thing to account for in any open PvP game.

Many gamers are against large worlds because they think it spreads the players out too much.

This is wrong if you have a game where there's good reasons for players to assemble at the key places like cities and dungeons. Classic UO had that. Players needed to go to cities for trade and repairs, to find out about events happening.

Yet, a landscape that gets cluttered with player housing is also bad. I'm in favor of a very large world, as long as there's reasons for players to spend time in cities and the main dungeons and hot spots.

Benefits from a much larger world than "classic" UO...

Room for housing. Yards!

Can develop player built cities of large scope

Adds much needed possibilities for exploration, which can include great discoveries

Would allow room for Farmlands and Livestock Pens to be developed, which in turn could allow for new/old ideas like breeding horses and such.

With above would allow for the original idea of UO where Dragons would hunt wider areas and player communities if their deer/food were depleted by hunting. That idea failed because UO wasn't nearly big enough, players were everywhere and hunting everything to extinction/respawn, i.e. it just couldn't work out.

Would allow for things like Dragons Nests deep in mountains and secluded, hard to find, hard to get to, etc.

Would allow for ancient ruins on a much bigger scale than the little things we see in UO now.

With above, ancient ruins could hold long lost secrets of many sorts. Lore, skill expertise (magic books, etc.) and hiding places for evil beings (Juo'Nar or whoever).

You get the idea. A large world can offer many great things to a game. And if players still have reasons to go to cities, they will. No problem.

I have to agree, alot of the things in UO aren't finished. It's like the ideas were presented and started so more could be done later but it never got to its' full potential or the system failed, due to a change.

I think the EC is done very well and I think KR was even better, the way the trees moved and looked, the way the water felt. It was very close to bringing the ground alive. I could picture them taking the next step to add in grass patches that actually moved or tiles that actually interacted with the player, similar to the sand by swoops.

The size of the world is very important. If you put alot of people in one room, eventually they will kill each other. If you allow just one person to leave and come back, they alone would have some sanity. If you look at extremes, you can have a better understanding, similar to temperature. I would keep my heat up very high when I was cold in the car and my brother told me to put it into the middle and I realized there was a happy medium.

Cities are done wrong in UO. Alot of things need to be changed completely. Redrawing the map is a necessity for these changes. An example: Is docks, and what they are capable of depending on what the city produces, trade routes. Think about it, every city has a stable, every stable is the same. So, what does it matter what city you go to? If every city has a jewler and every jewler offers you the same thing, then there is no reason to go to any particular city. This alone makes the city worthless and also dictates that what the NPC sells would need to be changed.

Luna was very close but also very, very, much off. A large city should hold about 100 player homes. So, the way they did the roads was right but way to small. The city has everything you need, right by the bank. This is a huge mistake. Within the city, there should of been places that were built. Such as, a stable, a tailor, but they should of been built within the player's city. So, that as you walked down a road in Luna, you would pass a player's home and then continue until you found an NPC's house.

Houses could of been required to use certain tiles or building sets. People could of had an option to turn their home into a certain type of shop, which could of granted them an NPC but maybe only one in a huge area.

Anyhow, you can't change these things, unless you completely change the map concepts and ideas.

The same thing with spell affects. The concept that they can't do any more spells should be changed. Add more spells, add more detail. I miss falling down the steps or dancing. I think alot of experimenting needs to be done. Games will continue to copy UO but none will ever be UO but if someone produces a game that has all of these things, UO would have failed and all of its' shards will become Classics.

Gamebryo.
It's a pretty capable engine (Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV, Civ IV, WAR), but it's got quite a few shortcomings too.
Problem isn't so much "What it can do" as much as it is "what it can do with the specifications most UO players will be using"

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Humph!
I would be interested in that list ...
The "quite a few shortcomings ..." list, that is

And while you are at it ... *grin*
What is the game engine used in the op's example?

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Like how is it being shoved down your throat? If you don't like the ec don't use it! I can't stand playing cc and it was shoved down my throat when they canceled 3d that i still miss, and was forced to use cc. That's being shoved down your throat.

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